


Housevisit

by LC_Aisling



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Doctor/Patient, Gen, Hurt, Hurt/Comfort, Muteness, Pain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-14
Updated: 2018-07-14
Packaged: 2019-06-10 06:48:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15286047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LC_Aisling/pseuds/LC_Aisling
Summary: Reginal Mills gets hurt during their latest magical encounters and is left to fend for herself. Another villain sees her in pain and offers his support, because if the heroes are too busy focusing on their own lair, the villains need comfort too.





	Housevisit

**Author's Note:**

> A simple idea that formed itself into a bit fuzzy oneshot.

“Don’t do it, you can get hurt!” Emma shouted to her mother. “Regina, do it!”

“It’s not less dangerous to me!” Regina retorted. How on earth could the savior of their town just randomly pick her out to suck in the demon while her mother had just… oh.

“Regina!” Snow tried to stop the argument about to spark off.

“Don’t be selfish now! Take the hit for the team!” Emma said.

Regina frown and then she blurted, flabbergasted. “You don’t want them to get hurt, but it doesn’t matter if it was me?”

“Yes!” Emma shouted without thinking. She was still keeping eye on the monster in front of them, so she didn’t see her mother’s and few others shocked faces nor how Regina paled. “Now, Regina!”

There was a pause, but then Regina’s eyes shattered. She took a deep breath and with determination, she walked past the people, not sparing them a glance, and after a deep breath, sparked her magic while tears prickled on the edge of her vision. She locked the creature in the energy force and pulled it near before opening her mouth and inhaling. The entity was sucked into her and for a second there was complete silence and then the screaming started. They ran to her, but there was nothing they could do. She kept screaming as if she was on fire from inside, her eyes not focusing on anyone, until her body gave in and she fainted. When she came around minutes later, it had happened in complete silence. No more screaming.

“I knew you could do it!” Emma patted her arm and went to deal with others, who were hurt during the fight.

Regina sat there in silence for a long moment, watching the scene unfold in front of her. Then she rose to her feet and started walking towards her house. There was good half an hour from this place, but she didn’t care. She needed the time to think.

There was no reason to stick around and wait until they got up and left, not waiting up. Hadn’t the woman said so herself? She’d known immediately after waking up that she didn’t have a voice any more. Magical as it was, she’d seen what would happen if someone pulled that dark entity in. The woman from the forest had lost her voice too – just like that it was gone and thus Regina had no illusions of what was happening to her would be exactly the same. They’d call it justice, she guessed. It would be so easy to believe that, but it didn’t matter. Right now she had to get home, where she could test out her voice without raising others suspicions. It wasn’t for her, the worry Emma spread like wildfire – all the good was for others. After all, she’d taken the hit, she had no more purpose.

Whatever it was, she wasn’t surprised when nobody came to search for her by the end of the evening. But something was wrong. She felt a lump in her throat and despite not wanting to, the next day she made an appointment and was in surgeon's office by lunch time. She needed the man to write her medical paper to add to another one – her resignation from the mayor’s office.

Two days later they were starting to get pissed at the Storybook’s. Regina had sent in resignation paper effective immediately and when her secretary was overwhelmed by the sudden move, Emma went for their lunch there, Emma went searching for Regina at home, but she wasn’t there. The sudden disappearance wasn’t the first time she hadn’t seen the mayor for days in a row, so she didn’t think much of it.

  


Meanwhile, Dr.Whale prepared for a sudden change in their plans at work. A man had been brought in the ER, who needed immediate attention on his eye and as the other doctor was better at that, he was given the operation on woman’s vocal cord damage. It wasn’t unheard of to change on the last minute and those things happened. The woman had already been prepped for the operation, so he was going in pretty much blind, only grasping what he needed to know from the files. Removing damaged tissue – no need to go deeper than absolute necessity.

“What’s her name?” He asked, waiting for the nurse to finish setting the scalpels up.

“Regina.”

He stopped on his track and a small whisper passed his lips. “Regina?” he asked half-loud, frowning and hastened his steps to come face-to-face with the woman on the operation table, pressed into uncomfortable position to open up her throat, half-dazed from the anesthetics.

It was odd, sitting down with her lulled head so close to his chest, but he suppressed the giggle trying to escape him. He had town’s major on his table!

Then he frowned. He had their town’s magical evil queen on his table! He quickly pushed her jaw open, still confused. Shouldn’t the part “magical” mean she would be easily cured by magic? She shouldn’t end up on his table – none of the magical creatures ended up there. He was human doctor – them, they had the savior to do the hocus-pocus act and save them through that!

“Oh my!” He inflated a little, seeing the blackened throat and the swollen vocal cords that were pretty much pieces of coals. Whatever heat had gone through that throat had been strong enough to curl the cords into two nuts… which were probably the foreign objects visible on her ultrasound. Suddenly he imagined her walking around the town like everything was fine, for outside she did look fine, while being in excruciating pain, because that had to hurt.

Muscle in his jaw twitched and he straightened, going back to doctor mode. Two hours later her throat looked much better, though raw and stitched due all the damage he had had to remove, but he was satisfied.

She was checked over the next day and sent home on the condition somebody would stay with her until her throat was healed. She might have problems with swelling and doctor specified she must have somebody in case it swells up to call the ambulance.

Dr. Whale watched as she left the hospital from his office window, curious, when he recognized her form, still impeccably dressed to match the huge scarf around her neckline. She carried a small overnight bag. He frowned, when he saw her taking a cab instead of being picked up, but he didn’t have more time for her, so he turned to work.

He was in night watch that night she went home. About two in the night they heard a car stopping outside and she wobbled in, fainting on the door. He nearly fainted himself from the sudden rage he felt for she’d promised to have someone by her side, yet she clearly drove the car herself to the infirmary. He even had to go outside and park it himself, because it had stopped in a bad place.

Two days later she was supposed to show up in the check-up, but failed to do so. That was the last straw in Whale’s book. In the evening, when his shift ended, and he had the next day off, he drove to the city center. He visited the local pharmacy for the basic care kit for that type of injuries, avoiding the questioning weird looks he got from the locals – because if he was being honest, they treated him pretty much with the same dislike as they did the queen – and stalked his way right to the queen’s house.

He rang the bell two times and waited. He honestly didn’t know what he was doing there, but he had told the other surgeon he knew the woman and would make the house visit to check on her personally, so here he stood and waited.

The door opened and Regina stood on the other side, the same scarf loosely around her neck, frowning with question in her eyes regarding his whereabouts.

“Hi, Regina. May I come in?” He asked instead, with enough venom to show her he wasn’t gonna leave. “I’m making a house-call.”

She frowned, but after standing there for half a minute, she stepped aside and he walked in.

“You failed to show up to your appointment today.” He explained, following her to the kitchen.

She shook her head, regretted the move a second later with tears filling her eyes, which made him glad he had bought extra of the medication she was supposed to have bought out yesterday, but she clearly hadn’t, or she wouldn’t be in such pain. Second fail, he noted, setting the bag down on the table.

She ignored the pain, went straight to the calendar and hit tomorrow’s date.

“No, it was today.” He confirmed her. She tried again, but he remained certain. “No – today. 15th? Today is 15th, you probably slept away yesterday.” He added with a smirk at her frown. She was so out of it last night, when she nearly crashed in front of the infirmary, she probably didn’t know, who had pushed the tube down her windpipe. She looked confused and he reminded himself it wasn’t proper to make fun of sick person. “Anyway, I’m here to check on your wound.”

She backed away immediately with scared look in her eyes.

“I’ve already been in your throat with pointy things!” He forced out, knowing full well her reluctance regarding him. “I was the one, who operated on you.”

She frowned again and waved her hands as if to say he was lying.

“We had emergency and he was needed there, so the operation was assigned to me.” He explained, taking a step closer and pushing the bag with meds in front of her on the table. “Which makes me quite cross with you – have you fulfilled even one condition set on you? Where’s Henry?”

He knew he was being too familiar with her, but compared to the rest of the townsmen, the magical punch did know each other as if long lost family.

Her face turned to stone and she glared at him.

Interesting. “You got sacrificed.” He guessed, exasperated. “The least they could do would be to stay with you until you heal!” No offense, he could see heroes doing that, focusing only on those they deemed fit for their close knit family, it was nothing new, but it still hurt. “You should have people around you! Has none of your goody friends visited you at all?” The way her eyes faltered for a second, made him pull back a little and study the woman in front of him harder. She was clutching her shirt. “I’m sorry, I assumed they would be worried with all that damage… Do they even know this has happened to you?”

Minute shake of her head told him she hadn’t informed them.

“Not even Henry?”

Again, a shake.

“So nobody has been to pharmacy, made sure you’ve drank enough water after operation, made your smoothies, nor checked on your bandages?” Her face turned to stone again. “That explains why you drove your own car!” He slapped at the table, feeling the rage from the few days before. “Are you insane? Have you any idea how dangerous that is? You could have fainted behind the wheel!”

The way her entire being turned into herself made him pause.

“What’s wrong?” He reached out without thinking. Weren’t they worried about her at all?

The way her eyes filled with tears gave him pause. So instead, he chose to take the two kitchen chairs and set them to face each other under the best light in the kitchen, told her to sit on one of them and went to wash his hands.

“I know you don’t trust me much, given our history, I can see, why. Can I just say that I -” he huffed, not ready for this, but he knew he had to say something or she would always be skittish with him. “When I, well,” he guessed he didn’t have to spell that part out, “I didn’t know about magic, ok? I really thought there was something wrong with your psychis, and acted accordingly. I’m sorry, now that I know you were actually telling the truth, what I did is…” he sighed, listening the water for a second. “I’m sorry.”

Regina looked confused, but the way she composed herself and quickly sat, removing her scarf, made him smile a little.

“Alright,” he said with happier note, reached out and with slight hesitation brushed away the tears from the edges of her eyes before putting the gloves on, “first I’m gonna check the swelling.”

He began removing the bandages and while doing the most mundane thing, he continued reprehending her for not buying out the cream meant to keep the swelling down. “Open your mouth.” He rummaged through the bag to find the ice cream stick pack. “Wider!” He chided as if he was talking to a kid and then continued checking her wounds from the inside. “Now, see? Oh, of course you can’t. If you had sprayed the antibiotic in your throat from the first day, you wouldn’t have that forming there! You swallow a lot, right?” She nodded and he shook his head. “Now you have to be a big girl and just put up with me removing it! Open more!”

Her hands grabbed the edge of his jacket without thought and he nodded, asking her if she was ready. She responded in kind. He guided her mouth wider, taking hold of her jaw and held it in place while he went in with scalpel and methodically began removing the clomp of blood formed on the edge of the wound.

Just as he was cutting into the blood, making her instinctively cry Aaaa, they heard the front door open with a bang and their sheriff galloping in.

“Regina?! I got a call about Whale coming this way! Are you here? Oh god! Get away from her!”

Dr. Whale groaned, pressuring her jaw tighter between his fingers in order to keep her head still.

“I am down her throat with a sharp knife, miss Swan! I would not try anything drastic!” He hissed, sending Regina a look not to move her head. “Almost there,” he said with softer tone and turned her slightly so the light would be better so he could remove the last of the dead membrane that was scratching the nearby cleaned edge, causing her to gulp more than she should. He got the last piece and slowly raised it out of her throat and tossed it on the napkin. “Done.” He assured her with a smile as if the savior wasn’t staring them down couple of steps away in shock.

He glanced at her for a second before going through the bag once more and retrieving bandages.

“I’m here to do my job.” He said, offering Regina reassuring smile. “Nothing more, miss Swan.”

“What are you talking about? Why would she need a doctor? Regina! Tell me, what is going on!”

He finished rolling the gauche around her neck and pulled the scarf around it as he’d seen it before.

“I’m afraid she can’t.” He sighed, annoyed how the big magical savior of the town didn’t know the extent of her injuries.

“What? What did you do?”

He rose, starting to collect the stuff and clunking the two bottles of medicine in front of her with thick look saying he expects them to be in use, before he turned his attention back on Swan. He glanced at Regina, who looked ready to die on the spot.

“She can’t, because we were forced to remove her vocal cords due heat damage to her throat.” He decided it was best to come clean. He could live with her dislike if she so chose, but he guessed it would have far less mess intact if he just told them how it was, rather than leave Regina trying to explain it without words. How long would it even take them to understand she can’t speak?

“What?”

“She’s mute.” He explained.

Regina had turned her back to her, but her eyes were fixed on him. They didn’t carry any threats to his life though and so he felt confident to continue.

“She had a major operation three days ago to remove damaged tissue from her throat. Unfortunately her vocal cords were beyond repair and we had nothing left to save. I came to check on her, and I will come again tomorrow” that was meant for Regina, who nodded as if they were on best of terms, “but as I can not be here 24/7, she needs someone, who would look after her while she is recovering.” And there was the murderous glare, he grinned back at her. “She needs to take her meds twice a day and spray her throat three times a day. Watch her for sudden swelling around throat and make sure she eats nothing solid for close to two weeks.”

“That’s like…”

“A lot to take in, I’m sure, but please keep in mind she is the one, who won’t be able to speak?” He added sarcastically, then went through his pocket and got a pen and notebook, which he pushed towards the queen. “If you are alone and you need something, send and sms on the number on the first page. I’m up most of the time, so do it!” He didn’t say what they both knew – if she had to call 911 and had decided to send Emma away. He knew he’d do it, too, for the woman did seem irritating enough.

He left, leaving the flabbergasted savior on the door. He had no sedatives to give to that stone statue and in a weird way it was satisfying as hell, for he guessed it would do some good for the savior to go through a mild shock.

But as far as Regina went, he’d keep his promise. They may not be friends, but deep inside he knew she wasn’t that much different from him. They both yearned for company and if the big heroes wouldn’t offer it to them, then at least the villains could offer it to each other.

**Author's Note:**

> THE END  
> Thank you for reading!


End file.
